Virginia man charged for attacking woman, 2 congressional staffers with baseball bat
Xuan-Kha Tran Pham, a 49-year-old man from Fairfax, Virginia, was arrested and charged for attacking a woman and two congressional staffers with a baseball bat.
On May 15, Pham approached a woman in her car and asked if she was white before smashing her windshield with a baseball bat, according to police.
In footage of the incident, the woman can reportedly be seen running away and can be heard screaming as Pham chases after her. She runs through a yard before the man eventually gives up the chase.
Shortly after, Pham reportedly entered Rep. Gerry Connolly’s (D, VA-11) district office in Fairfax and attacked two staffers, including the office’s outreach director and an intern working her first day on the job. The intern was struck on the side of her body, while the director was hit on the back of the head with the baseball bat.
The 49-year-old also proceeded to smash glass windows and computers, according to Connolly. A responding officer also suffered minor injuries at the scene.
Connolly said his staffers were released from the hospital after being treated for their injuries.
Although their injuries were not life threatening, Connolly noted how vulnerable district offices are in an interview with ABC 11.
I have no reason to believe that his motivation was politically motivated, but it is possible that the sort of toxic political environment we all live in, you know, set him off, and I would just hope all of us would take a little more time to be careful about what we say and how we say it. It does underscore for all of us the vulnerability potentially of our district offices because we don’t have the level of security we have here on Capital [sic] Hill.
Pham, who refused to appear at his arraignment, was arraigned on four charges.
The charges include three felonies: one count of aggravated malicious wounding, one count of malicious wounding and one count of destruction of property. Pham also received a hate crime charge for a statement he allegedly made to the woman in her car.
He was ordered held without bond until a hearing scheduled for July 17.
Pham’s father, Hy, told The Washington Post that his son is schizophrenic and has been dealing with mental illness since his late teens.
Hy added that his son has been refusing to take medication. A year ago, Pham sued the Central Intelligence Agency in federal court for allegedly “wrongfully imprisoning [him] in a lower perspective” and “brutally torturing [him] with a degenerating disability consistently since 1988 till the present from the fourth dimension.”
According to Hy, Pham blamed the FBI and the Navy for “making him sick.”
Last year, Pham also assaulted responding officers after calling dispatch and saying he wanted to harm others. Although he was charged with four felonies, they were all dropped after Pham entered an agreement to comply with mental health services.
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